Flesh and Blood
by sofia-carby
Summary: Tony's father was a murderer. He comes to visit and tries to explain. Tony is confused and at the same time feels such a hunger - a need - for Ziva. A story about twisted love/lust. My take on the episode that will be about Tony and his father.


_**In advance, please forgive me. This is totally OOC and this is twisted, messed up, too weird etc. etc. Not all people are pretty. I've never written anything like this but I was, per usual, inspired by lyrics; 'It's warmer in the basement' by Cobra Starship and the book the Lovely Bones (which I BTW did not like at all) and the episode named 'Flesh and Blood/Bone' aka Tony's daddy dearest comes for a visit. Also Heath Ledgers the Joker a tad. Sorry for ruining Tony in this story. I really do like him even though my writing mind doesn't. I own nothing except my thoughts. Review, please. **_

_**---**_

His father was a murderer. A killer. A machine who took lives, ate their souls and stole their breath. Tony had known this when he was little. It was something deeply embedded in his memory; how his five-year-old self had padded down the hallway on child limbs, soft steps echoing in their back then forever-stretching house. He had woken up in the middle of the night from nightmares that suffocated his sleep and gotten up, scared of monsters that caressed his neck with fever-fingertips and thirsty from all the dream marathons stumbling through his mind. So with a drought in his throat and his favorite stuffed animal under his baby fat encircled arms, he had walked to the kitchen; tripping and falling down the monster stairs. He'd called for his father, thin still-baby voice in the void of their love-less home. No answer. With a child's naïve mind and fearless bones he'd forgotten about water and pretended he was invisible in a castle of monsters. He was a knight and he was to explore his castle; all the nooks and crannies of the mystery. Little did he know what hid behind the rusty door in the garage that always stayed locked would set deep, gushing wounds in his clean soul. That night he found out his mother didn't commit suicide like his father said she did. He just knew. He found out that real monsters do exist and they have gray hair on their frogskinned skulls. He never told his father about his discovery. He went back to bed, heavy weights glued to his memory, and lived life knowing his father was a man who enjoyed other people's pain. He was a businessman with hidden pleasures. A disguised murderer with pretty silk suits that covered up his blood-dipped crescent fingernails and hollow soulroom in his body. Adolescence was a pain; the money he was given soiled. He had told his father he knew what an itching creep he was and had slammed the door in his astonished, disgusting face. He'd been on his own then, with hatred boiling under his skin. He had never told anyone. Never. Tony hated his father so he became a cop so he could shoot the fucking bastards who came from the same dirt puddle the monster rose from.

Perhaps he hid behind his jokes, crouching and scared to the scraped soul to show who he really was. To show what his past was; what kind of dirt blood that ran in his sky veins. There was always a gap in his soul. He never really knew how to fill it. There was only one person who had ever come close to break his shell open; threatening to spill all that history and aching emotions out all over his clean scrubbed floor. Ziva.

_**---**_

At first he only wanted her. Wanted her the way he had wanted her for all those years; watching her always in the corner of his subconscious – telling himself he would never get her. He felt attraction snares around his ankles from the beginning. Shivering heartbeat and raise eyebrows. At first she had been a huge flirt; this exotic woman with an accent so wonderful it soared about the room making him place pretend sighs and correct her. They had kissed, going undercover, making fun and making non-love. Then he'd had to go undercover by himself; not telling her and hurting her. Hid under a secure blanket of lies. It had been a rough few months after that and he had seriously questioned his feelings for her. What was it? Was it real? Was it tangible? She would stride right into the men's room and tell him things and truths he wanted to press back in her throat. He didn't want to let go of either of his bittersweet undercover lovers. Ziva had opened a door as Jeanne shut one and he was stuck in in-between land of confusing dreams and restless sleep. As he'd wobbled at Ziva's threshold, the past pulling him back back and chance daring him to take a step forward, to trust his Bambi-bones. He had. And she had pulled him in, wrapped him in her cloud of wonderful scents and then sweet lies. He had killed her lover, she had left, gotten taken and he had taken her back.

_**---**_

Then life comes to a standstill. He doesn't know how to approach; does he work in circles, does he tell her how she feels? Bathrooms are their place. The place where emotions spin his body and words. That's the closest they ever got. He doesn't know how to. How to make her understand the feelings he can't even explain to his own confused flesh. December air gives him no answers and he celebrates Christmas alone, thinking of her and the prettiness that is her entire. Perhaps she wants him, too. The attraction he feels for her is hard to shape in soft-edged words. He's certainly never felt like this. It's a hunger that makes him starve for her and he has no idea how to cope; how to still the fire hunger that slowly burns him.

_**---**_

Then, for the first time in years, his father comes to visit. He is standing at Tony's doorstep, the bridge between crushed childhood and unknown adulthood; grim mask with carved riverbeds in his face. He has the same way of standing with his back slightly crooked under years of down-to-the-bone hard work. Literally. All that hate that Tony felt when he was a baby comes up to the surface in whirlpools; hatred and memories blending into confusion. Their eyes are the same color. All blue spoiled with green. All wise and knowing and mouthing _shit what the fuck son/dad._ Still Tony lets his father in and silently watches as he walk about his house; quiet judging caressing his old man-skin. He can tell he doesn't approve of his couch with threads hanging out; forming knots in the material. His whole movie selection, stretching from floor to ceiling; shelves filling in the gaps of his pathetic life; the way girls and alcohol sometimes fill them.

His father turns around, brows together; mouth rock line in stone face.

'I'm sorry, son.'

Surprise catches Tony by his shoulders, pressing him into his fathers muddy words. They leave prints and he doesn't know what to do with them, repeat ignore ask _what are you sorry for dad and why the fuck didn't you tell me earlier?_

His father sighs, his soulless being crumpling into a pathetic piece of nothing right in front of Tony's eyes. This man who stood so proudly with his tree-spine, buying bruises on Tony's fragile skin when he was just a baby and did things that was wrong in adult-world. This man is finally cracking down his ribcage; opening up to the nothingness inside.

'I'm sorry what I did to you. To your mother. I couldn't help it. It was me, who I was.'

Perhaps truth cling to the words; all slippery grasp. Perhaps not.

'You killed all those people.'

His 5-year-old is there; circling the room with his loud, whiny breath and innocence breaking apart.

His father sighs from somewhere deep down his skeleton body.

'Yes. Yes, I did. You will never forgive me, Anthony. I know that. But would you let me – perhaps – explain why?'

Tony doesn't believe he is in control over his own tendons when he nods, it's the child again; needing an explanation to _what why when how did I do wrong daddy?_

_**---**_

They go to a diner. January is all around; a constant dull, gray Christmas hangover. The coffee is just as gray and dull. He covers the taste with cream, trying to suffocate and sugarcoat the horror of it all. His knuckles are white around the blister-marking cup and the table has dents in it.

And his father talks. And talks. And talks. Sometimes Tony just watches the muscles in his lizard-neck working, croaking out words of wrong and kick and disturbed and psycho and therapist and medicine. Tony doesn't believe there is such a drug that can delete his childhood but still listens and hates the seed of hope is father plants somewhere within him.

Hours and a semi-rebuilt childhood later his father silences, words dying on his lips. Tony swallows the last of gray-grazed coffee and looks into his father's eyes. They are not the same when he was a little kid but perhaps the monster in disguise is yet again fooling him. He cannot feel his blood-soaked saliva drip down his child-neck but he can never be sure.

'I'm a different man, Tony. I'm well now.'

Tony doesn't believe but still does. He shakes his father's hand and makes a promise of a call when he feels ready, when all the emotions have dried up. It's weird. The confusion is there but he understands. Understands why his father did what he did. It's the naïve child; seeing past the scary parts; wanting needing craving approval. His father leaves for the airport but turns around at the last second and places his warm hand at Tony's winter-kissed shoulder.

'Be careful, Tony. Don't forget who you are.'

_**---**_

As time passes things change. Things are different now. Better. He let go of his anger after his father left, dropped it altogether with the rest of the pain his life dragged around, burning his heels with sour memories.

The situation with Ziva is wonderful, too. His father left and life started something. Something amazing. Something fantastic. He is brave now, not confused, not spinning in circles.

It was first after his father's visit he realizes he loves her. He loves the way she pushes her curls between her fingernails. He loves the concave of her bird-neck, the way her lashes sometimes graze her cheeks with feathery lightness. He realizes what that hunger is, how the starvation for her - the ache the ache the lust – can be stilled.

_**---**_

It's an average day. He's behind his desk, working on whatever needs to be worked on. Letters blending together on the computer screen, black and white logic. She is across from him. Ziva. All darkness formed curls around her pretty petite head and soft-carved features. It almost hurts, the way he wants her. The lusthunger. He wants her legs wrapped like rubbery twigs around his waist, sticky heelbones digging into his back. He wants to kiss her, slow and reassuring; saliva and heat telling her it's all right. He wants to place whisper-dipped breath in the curve of her ears, promises and love he knows she wants to hear. His bones are on fire with the ache he needs her. She is so wonderful. Birch-like limbs covered in the most astonishing color of sun-stained skin. He shivers in all his cells when she looks at him, eyebrows forming an invisible question mark. Ah her sarcasm surrounding him. He loves it. Her voice ringing in his ears. She has such pretty skin. He wants to caress it. He wants to kiss it. He wants to cut that pretty honeyflesh up.

Oh how he wants it.

_**---**_

The feeling had come creeping, seeping, crawling its way into his heart. It was a fever that woke him at night; licking him all over; choking in lust and drowning in need. At first he hadn't known what was wrong. Then he had taken on the neighbor's cat that always screamed all night and kept him awake. Rage had made his bones all dull and he had grabbed the cat by its tail, pressed its pretty salty fur into the coldgrazed earth. Dust and frozen grass suffocated it and afterwards his veins had been singing with adrenaline; almost bursting at the seams. It had felt good. He threw up in horror; pressing his sweat-caressed cheek against the damp bathroom floor; inhaling acid and soap and realization. He had found a way to fill that gap within him. He had found a way to strangle the fiery hunger.

_**---**_

It's another kind of lust what he feels now. It's exciting it's rush rush rush it's new and he doesn't know what to do with it all. Is it wrong?

She is un-spoiled snow, silent, soft rain in the sky. He wants to caress her; the way stubbornness always caresses her foreign features, making her unearthly beautiful. He wants to see what she looks like in and under and without that pretty summer smile of hers. It cannot be wrong. Nothing in his life has ever felt so right. He wants to see the inside of her smile.

At first it's enough to just look at her. Imagining what he will do with her. Oh, her screams. They will be wonderful, shrill sounds echoing all over; kissing goose flesh on his lust-filled body. He will save those sounds of agony in a box under his bed together with those locks of hers, to take out and play with whenever he wants to. The things he will do. She will be so beautiful; helpless and hopeless. At first they will make love. Then he will make lust and she will make pain. Oh.

Red will be a pretty color on her naked peachlimbs. Steel with be such a lovely contrast; sharp edges on her soft-carved profile. Picture perfect.

Today they are out somewhere in the woods, by a silent playing creek, letting go of March and ice. The carcass they find is beautiful. A young girl with ribs like sticks; a soft-bending torso. Ziva could be her twin. Pretty bones and youth-skin.

When they get back to the office he feels like it is time. The hunger within him needs to be stilled; needs her.

'Hey, Ziva.'

She turns to him, candy lips slightly parted. She smiles then and her dimples are sugarfilled craters. That tender tissue arching all over, so achingly beautiful.

'Would you like to do something tonight?'

Her lips drop even more so, he can spot the pink flesh of her gums. He has to dig in his half moon engraved nails into his sweat-surrounded palms.

'Are you asking me out?'

'I guess I am.'

He is smiling, all reassuring and pleasant. His fingers are greedy and they itch itch itch.

'Well … okay then.'

The scarlet in her cheeks, the high above voice. It will be all rainbow colors of enhanced wonderfulness in his basement.

_**---**_

He is to pick her up in a while. His car is a heat cave, lust roaming his veins the road a neverending plate of asphalt and earth. This is the night. This is it. Of course; he will savor their time together. Make sure she lasts for a long time so he can look at her and clench his thirst for her. He wants to bind her to that wooden-chipped chair of his; introducing her to his basement; all red stoned walls. Tell her about the pretty things in there. At first he wants her to understand. How much he loves her in every bone in his body. Then he will split her elastic flesh up; white cream outsides turning inside out. Twig limbs bursting under pressure. She will be the prettiest he will ever see, he is sure.

_**---**_

'Shush.'

He is shivering all over and not from cold.

'Hush, no one hears you down here.'

He presses his lips against her forehead and inhales the scent from her, drowning in her retched noises. And oh she is struggling, kicking at him with her spidery legs. When she hits his fever skin he chuckles; happiness bubbly within him; lust on the outside fogging up. He wants to tell her about how this all started, how he is different now. She never wanted him before and now she wants him. She wants him. She wants him. He is sure. He's a changed man; not that child he was earlier; jokes that covered up that childhood of his. No. All is well now. He is all grown up and he needs her to see that. This is what she wants. A man. Like the man of hers he shot a lifetime ago. He laughs. That was fun.

She was so, so easy to trick. Oh how easy it was. He is astonished and eagerness is fire in his body. He gets to show her now; press play and show her who he really is. What a relief it is! Finally he can be who he is; be the man he was destined to be. No more lies; no more hiding. He can stop crouching and rise up. Unfold his torso, exhaling whoever he used to be.

Who knew wonder had been right in front of his eyes for four years? So pretty up close his heart is wrapped in awe. He smiles. His father was right. This is who he is. He just needs her to understand that.

To think this all started with his and ends with her flesh and blood.

It's funny, don't you think?

Oh, her bones are lovely.

_**---**_

_**I honestly don't have much to say. It's … weird and OOC as I said. But please review, even if you hated it. **_


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